24 Hours of Daytona

They were the first Japanese manufacturer to win at Le Mans in 1991 with the 787.

You might have heard at the Rolex, one of the cars caught on fire and burned.

Fortunately, the good news is that car is saveable, and they're going to be bringing it back to life.

But this is a unique opportunity to see them all together with the Nissans and the Toyotas and the Mazdas all in one line.

And let's be honest, how much was this about Josh Pearson? He was the driver that was being most talked about that was going to end up in an A.J.

Foyt seat and has had some results, has had multiple podiums, has a lot of experience, has been the youngest driver ever to run the Rolex 24 and at Le Mans, has won sports car races, but had not won an Indy Next race.

and entered this season as a championship contender.

Finished, I think, sixth last year, and third, fourth, fifth, and sixth were back, but was 11th and 12th, and then spun out of the lead at Milwaukee.

Of course.

Okay, now we come to Daytona 24 Hours.

This will see quite a few drivers from other series.

Monty being one of them.

Huge respect for that.

John's competed in some pretty big time races like the Rolex 24. that I'm still hoping to be able to find some way to sneak onto a team and do that sometime.

But I think he just brings that experience, that European experience as a Texan, which is an interesting combination.

And he brings that to the table that I'm not going to be able to bring.

We had a bunch of great conversations leading up to Le Mans in June with Pierre Fionn and Bruno and Terry Bouvet and, of course, Richard Mille.

And we decided that rather than start with a new car at the Rolex 24 in Daytona in 2028, We would give it a year, allow the teams to establish themselves with new equipment, so we'll run the existing car the rest of this season, obviously, 27 and 28, be ready in 29 to kick it off, and I think it just gives everybody a bit longer runway to plan.

I think some of the chassis manufacturers might be thanking you for that as well, because they've got a ramp up for that.

Now, as it stands at the moment, IMSA only has one LMH ruleset car, and that's Partner Racing and their Valkyrie.

200 miles they were ahead of it.

In contrast, I love this.

The last three Rolex 24s have been decided in collectively seven seconds.

Yeah, and one thing that's really, really changed is just reliability.

Part of the reason those modern races, like you look at a modern NASCAR race, pick any Series 1, Formula 1, you know, virtually all the cars that started the race finish the race.

Not an autonomous vehicle, but truly a vehicle that would transmit to the blind person the information necessary for them to drive the vehicle.

What you will see at blinddriverchallenge.org is a video of a gentleman named Mark Riccobono, too many marks, Mark Riccobono driving a vehicle independently without any assistance around the Daytona Speedway right before the 2011 Rolex 24 race.

He will go through an obstacle course.

He will pass boxes that are being thrown out of a van to try to block his way.

Yeah, they were asking if our system could do that and how it could do that.

I read it into it a little bit more of like, isn't there, is it the Rolex 24 that they run like several classes on the track at the same time?

Well, just about any SCCA race has that.

But yeah, they'll have, you know, I don't know all their classes.

So once we start building this event, it is all things January and February.

So on a parallel path, we're talking the Roar before the Rolex, the Rolex 24.

We're bringing the Clash back.

The Clash is going to be here in Daytona Saturday, February 13th.